MGK Got Songwriting Assist From Ex Megan Fox on ‘Lost Americana’ Track About the Most Tragic Love Story of All Time

MGK and Megan Fox may no longer be engaged, but former “twin flame” couple are still making beautiful music together. Just check the songwriting credits for rapper-turned-pop-punk-rocker Kelly, whose new album, Lost Americana, features a track titled “Orpheus” credited to co-writers Kelly and Fox.

The gentle piano and strings ballad opens with MGK sighing, “We grew a tree back in the garden/ With a celestial seed that fell down to us from the stars/ The sun rose high and killed our shadows/ There’s more to see under the light than in the dark.” The lyrics allude to the tragic Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice via lines about an undying love that cannot be.

“Somewhere in a different realm, we’re still together/ Somehow, I’ll find my way to you again/ Shipwrecked, but I hold hopes of buried treasure,” MGK sings on the song in which he vows, “I won’t let you love me, but I can’t let you leave me/ It’s a tragedy, and we’ve all seen that scene.”

In the Greek myth, musician Orpheus loses wife Eurydice to a snake bite and travels to the underworld to plead with Hades for her return. The god of the depths offers to let Eurydice return to life if Orpheus agrees not to look back at her until they’re both above ground again. When his anxiety about their return overwhelms him, Orpheus looks back and loses Eurydice forever.

Similarly, the song that appears to chronicle the on-and-off couple’s tumultuous, drama-filled love affair, which seemingly ended for good when they split just before Fox gave birth to their daughter, Saga Blade, in March of this year. It also seems to be a call back to the poem “Prove it, Orpheus” from Fox’s 2023 book of poems Pretty Boys Are Poisonous, which fans at the time suspected was about the singer.

In it, she wrote, “And when they ask you what is your biggest regret/ Don’t writ it in a song/ Cut yourself open and write it in blood.”

The “celestial seed” reference in the song also seems like a call-back to a mini-controversy that erupted around the time of the baby’s birth when MGK announced the good news by writing, “She’s finally here!! our little celestial seed.” Kelly later clarified that of course they didn’t name their daughter Celestial Seed, but it’s unclear at this point if the song writing preceded the tweet or if Kelly leaned into the misunderstanding on the track as a wink.

At press time it was also unclear if the former couple worked on the song together, or if Fox’s songwriting credit is tied to her earlier poem; a spokesperson for Kelly had not returned a request for clarification on the credit at press time.

The majority of the songs on the album were written solely by Kelly or Kelly with Emma Rosen, or the pair with LP co-producer Nick Long. However, Third Eye Blind’s Stephan Jenkins gets a co-writing credit on “Starman,” which interpolates the entire chorus to 3EB’s breakout 1997 single, “Semi-Charmed Life.”

MGK has been on a full-court press blitz for Lost Americana, with his hometown of Cleveland preparing to celebrate its favorite son with the annual MGK Day celebration this weekend. Events from Friday through Sunday (Aug. 8-10) include the XXCon gathering at Jacobs Pavilion featuring an acoustic performance, DJ set from Emo Night Brooklyn and a celebration of the album tonight. The party will continue on Saturday with a Now That’s What I Call Brunch party with music by Bobby Booshay, a street league skateboard takeover and a bar crawl. Sunday will kick off with a Harley-Davidson city ride ending at the MGK Day Community and Arts Festival and celebrity basketball game; click here for the full roster of events.